Walking Away
by Jest'lyn Tal
Summary: Which is more important, the memories that you leave behind or the ones that you don't? It's a question both Thane and Shepard will have to answer. MASS EFFECT 3 SPOILERS
1. Chapter 1

Standard Disclaimers: I don't own Bioware. I'd tell you what I'd do if I did… but that'd be spoilers. SPOILERS FOR MASS EFFECT 3.

This snippet takes place directly after the first conversation of FemShep with Thane and presumes a ME2 romance. I feel a huge emotional gap in how things were handled with Thane. I don't want to break canon, but I do want to fill in gaps to make myself feel better ;) This is my attempt.

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><p>The doors closed behind her and blocked out the sound and scent of the hospital. The cocoon of calm allowed Shepard to let go of the amiable expression and demeanor of ease she'd kept plastered to her face for the last hour or so. She stood by the control panel, aware enough to be grateful that she was alone, as she allowed her chaotic thoughts full rein once more.<p>

For one moment, she was certain that she was going to draw her gun and charge back through the doors into the hospital. The staff probably wouldn't panic outright. There'd be shrieks and some people smart enough to hit the floor, but she expected confusion to be the primary reaction among those who noticed her.

He, of course, would notice her. He'd probably stand up, searching for the threat that had brought her hurtling back.

That would give her an advantage since he wouldn't suspect that she was the threat and he was her target until too late.

Thane's collar had always looked very grabbable to her and she figured it would b e easy enough to get a strong grip there. She was fully prepared to ignore any questions coming from those lips of his and drag his ass, by force, back to the Normandy with her.

He needed daily medical attention. That was something that Chakwas could easily give.

He wasn't at his best. As if his mediocre wasn't better than most people's best.

His cardiovascular system wasn't up to exertion. As if needing to be alone with him, without an audience, had to mean she wanted more from him then just his company. As if sex was all she'd valued him for. All she'd been returning for.

"I've thought of you often," he'd said calmly.

The moment was gone and common sense drowned out the impulse to terrorize the hospital.

She punched the wall by the control panel instead, pain immediately flaring in her knuckles. Cracked, likely. Damn it. Her mouth twisted in a snarl, both against the pain and the emotions that prompted such a foolish gesture. The tears that sprung to her eyes were angry. She didn't allow them to be anything else.

"We always knew it had to end."

Everything had to end. Her planet was, at this very moment ending. The universe as they knew it, in fact, could very soon be over. Did that really change anything?

She closed her eyes.

He'd seemed so at peace.

It was… probably selfish to wish he was not. That he'd rage a little more. That he'd fight. He was dying, but she didn't understand why he'd want to spend the last of his days watching the world go by from a metaphorical porch.

It was like he was already gone.

She pressed the control, choosing to return to the docks and Normandy, swallowing her pride and pain. It was alright. He was dying. If he needed to face it with peace then… it was alright. She would not take that away from him.

If anyone deserved a little bit of peace, it was him, right? She felt the fist clenched around her heart ease, ever so slightly. Besides, she had a war to fight anyway. There were visions of burning children to bat from her mind and drell embraces and reverberating timbres would not be enough to do it. Erasing that horror would take all of her anger, hate and determination brought to bear. It would take eradicating the enemy so that it could not cause such destruction ever again.

She couldn't afford the shelter of Thane's presence right now.

Her eyes narrowed as suspicion blossomed.

That was probably why he'd made it so gently clear he would not provide it.

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><p>Thane did not allow himself to watch her leave.<p>

He believed himself to be fairly good at reading human expressions; after all they were not very different than drell. Furthermore, he believed himself to be very good at reading Shepard's expressions. Beneath the placid smiles and gentle tone he had caught the edge of something less than … pleased in her eyes.

It had indicated to him that she wouldn't likely put up with their easy conversation for much longer. He'd managed to see them through to an amiable if not completely natural ending to their time together, and she'd consciously or unconsciously respected the cue to leave.

He was fairly sure that if she'd caught him watching her leave though, the ruse would be over.

The elevator doors closed and he in turn closed his eyes.

She was alive.

He hadn't been sure of that. He had more sources of information than the local news and he knew that earth had been hit hard. He even knew that the facility she'd been held in had been destroyed.

As a result of this and the scant images the news was carrying, his dreams these past few nights had been very troubled. They were filled with memories of Irikah interspersed with Shepard's too still form on shattered concrete.

But, no. She was alive.

She was healthy too, it seemed. This was not unexpected but there had been some question in his mind. He'd been unable to talk with her or communicate at all since the military had put her under restriction six months ago. He'd been fairly certain she'd been treated well. The Alliance military were not Krogan nor were they Vorcha. Abusing one of their own was not something he had any reasonable cause to suspect.

He made sure anyway.

It gave him something do to, after all. All it had taken was a few questions here and there and, early on, a covert infiltration of the facility itself. He hadn't seen her but he'd seen her room. That was enough, he'd decided, and he left it at that.

Of course, it was likely he'd let his emotions get the better of him in that decision. It had been three months into her restriction and he wasn't sure she'd still want to see him. Perhaps she'd chosen not to respond to his communication deliberately. Perhaps the time apart had taught her what it really meant to be in love with a man so soon to die, and she'd retreated as was the wise and best course for her.

A smile touched his lips. He shouldn't have doubted her. That kiss alone, which he was certain would have stolen his breath away even if he had all his breath to give, was enough to clear all question from his mind.

It was that kiss, and the ones that had come before it, that he wanted her to remember.

Not this. Not here.

He stood up and went to the elevator. His apartment was not far and he could still walk. On bad days he had to stop twice. On good days, simply moving slowly would do.

That was a bit of a problem, since he was in no mood to stop or move slow. He had some calls to make that probably shouldn't wait. He Who Dreamt of Coral Skies was still managing most of the hits going out from the Facility. He was a reasonable person and Thane was certain it would not be hard to convince him to lend Hanar and Drell efforts towards the Alliance cause. The sooner that could be arranged the better.

Once that was done, he should track down Mouse. The citadel was going to get very crowded, very fast. It would require watching and there were certain to be challenges and opportunities presented. He had to make sure that all would be handled to the benefit of the war.

And Shepard.

She would not be without his help. He could not, would not, be beside her. All that would have accomplished would be to provide her with a front seat to his decline and give her a lifetime of horrible memories. He refused to do that to her.

But that did not mean that he would not help with every contact, every resource, and every asset he could get his hands on.

A violent fit of coughing accompanied these passionate thoughts, as if to mock him.

He wanted to be home. He wanted to sit down and close his eyes. He wanted to remember every moment of time spent with Shepard, starting from when he'd first seen her in that tower, challenging him to move, to that fierce kiss of a few moments ago. He wanted to lose himself in the reverie and let it become his reality for a time.

It wasn't the same as being with her, but he could force himself to be content with it.

He sighed and indulged in a brief moment of grief for the days with her that would never come.

Then he ignored the pain and walked faster.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Bioware. I most certainly don't own Shepard or Thane. MASS EFFECT 3 Spoilers ahead! I wanted to thank everyone who reviewed. It's nice to know I'm not insane and that others weren't exactly pleased either. Posh (since there was no reply addy for you) You hit the problems right on the head. I'm glad this gave some comfort and hope that subsequent chapters… well… at least explain things. I'm certainly not comforted by them! In fact, I'm downright depressed now ;) Hence my putting up a poll which I've never done so before or even thought them useful. But, honestly – I don't know if I should try and make a happy story of this (somehow) or not. So – please take the poll and let me know what you think. Sorry for the long note!

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><p>Shepard entered the elevator leading from Huarta memorial hospital quietly. The doors behind her closed without a sound and the elevator itself began moving with only a low background hum once she'd pressed the level for Purgatory bar. When it arrived she stepped out and walked directly, but not purposefully towards the bar.<p>

The air carried with it the faint tang of smoke. This area of the citadel hadn't been hit hard by the Cerberus troops, after all the bar was hardly of strategic value. But, the faint Citadel wind carried the bitter scent of burning things from elsewhere on the promenade. It had only been a day, after all.

More specifically, it had been about sixteen hours. Not that Shepard knew this on any conscious level. Time had ceased to be important to her and therefore had stopped leaving any reliable impact on her thoughts. The last time she'd paid attention to time was the moment she first realized that there was a blade running through Thane.

She balked at thinking any further about that. In fact, she balked at thinking at all. That was why she was going to the bar.

Alcohol equaled oblivion.

Away from the ship equaled better morale for the crew.

That was as far as she got.

That was as far as she got because Thane was gone and it was her fault.

Gone.

No.

He wasn't gone. Gone was too gentle a euphemism. He was dead.

The tightness, the choking sensation of panicked grief rose up in her throat and shoved it down, hard. The music pounded, a wild thing that beat and forced the dancers to thrash in time. It vibrated up through her boots and pulled at her.

Maybe this was a mistake. Getting drunk meant losing memories, but it also meant losing control. Her face was known here. Even if it wasn't, there was no dignity in a sobbing blathering drunk.

Then again, she didn't care about dignity. She wanted to kill. She wanted to rage. She wanted to tear things apart just to see them break… see things burn… scream…weep… keen…

No. No. This was not where she should be.

But there was nowhere for her to be, was there? Nowhere that she wasn't needed. Nowhere that she could grieve.

There was nowhere for her, now.

She stopped again, not only in her thoughts, bleeding past the fingertips of her control, but also in her forward movement. She moved to turn, to head back out the door, to search blindly again for somewhere safe. At the last moment, movement out of the corner of her vision caught her attention.

It was Joker. He'd spotted her and was waving, a bright smile on his face. She blinked. EDI was sitting beside him, placidly watching the world go by.

Joker and EDI.

Friends.

Thane's friends, too.

It was impulsive and had she paused even for a moment she would not have done it. Joker respected her. Given his questioning, cynical nature, that respect wasn't just a gift it was absolutely essential in their relationship. He trusted her to be strong and keep them safe.

But he was Thane's friend. And he was, to the degree that their positions allowed, her friend too.

In the back of her head was the vague notion that she'd sit and drink, talk about Thane and the shared good times, and by doing so with others at first, perhaps it wouldn't be so hard. And, if she got drunk or on the verge of embarrassing herself, at least Joker was not direct combat support and EDI was strong enough to carry her home. She could do that. She could handle that. She was already walking over to them.

There was no conscious choice to place the bland easy expression on her face as she said hello. Maybe it was Joker's smile and the natural instinct to match expression for expression. Or, perhaps, it was her way of forcing her calm back. It didn't matter.

What mattered was that Jeff kept smiling as he talked.

Which meant that she had to keep smiling.

He spoke about the dancers. About EDI. About trivial things. And EDI chimed in with pithy statements and occasional questions.

He was smiling. And he obviously expected her to be smiling.

Which had to mean that he didn't know.

He couldn't know.

Know that she'd let Thane die…

The thought wound it's way back into full force and she took a step back from the two. There was no quaver in her voice, nothing in her expression but that amiable blankness as she made a quick goodbye. They accepted it. They had no reason not to.

When the doors of purgatory closed behind her though, she ran.

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><p>The first time that Shepard had been a hair's breadth away from shooting Kaidan Alenko, he'd been shaken by it, made uncertain and wary.<p>

The second time, however he never even realized it was happening.

She'd been churning over with conflicting emotions. Anger, denial, sorrow. Words that were too small to capture what she felt, but that had to serve in lieu of any others to replace them.

And as she'd boarded the Normandy again to find the privacy of her room and vent all of that darkness, Kaidan'd been waiting for her. Just standing there, that handsome face of his so sweetly uncertain and filled with doubt. It was his default expression around her lately. Oh, every once in a while that uncertainty was supplemented with suspicion or accusation. But the core remained. She smiled tightly at him and listened to his concerns. She barely even heard her reassuring response.

"Kaidan 's not a bad person," was the litany that she kept repeated to herself as he spoke, and she lay her hands flat against her thighs to prevent them from forming into fists. He was a good person. He was a good soldier. He didn't understand a thing about her any more, but that was alright. If he needed to be treated as a child, constantly in need of coddling, she'd do that. She'd pick him up, dust him off, bandage his worries and fucking send him on his merry….

Before her anger could burst into hatred he asked her a question. He wanted to rejoin the Normandy.

Fine. She smiled yet again. She could use another good soldier. She could use his perspective and abilities.

But this was his last chance. If he came aboard, he'd have to trust her. She didn't have time for anything else. Subordinates were not allowed the luxury of second guessing her, and he hadn't acted as a friend to her in years.

Despite her best efforts, perhaps something showed in her face. Perhaps it was obvious that her patience was at an end, or that she found his desire to rejoin somewhat ironic.

Or, maybe, Kaidan simply was a good man who knew more about her moods and expressions then he let on. Either way, he didn't need any prompting to tell her that he was done doubting her.

Her face felt tight as she smiled. She was grim but grateful as he left her alone to board the ship.


End file.
